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While Schweitzer’s ethical deliberations point to the beginning of the environmental movement, they do not predict the extent of the destruction of the environmental foundations that we know today. The climate crisis, the destruction of the rainforest, the extinction of many species – in our everyday lives we constantly block out how our life style is destroying the basis of our own existence. However, sometimes we do become aware of how precious and vulnerable it is. On 21 December 1968, Apollo 8 launched the fi rst manned fl ight to the moon. As the space ship approached the boundary between day and night on the moon, the three astronauts, Bill An ders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, read pas sages from the Genesis creation narrative. Bill Anders began: ‘We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.’ Frank Borman ended the reading by saying: ‘We close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.’ This was a special moment. I was ten years old at the time, but I remember distinctly how moved we all were. All of a sudden, the earth could be seen from afar. It was a sight never seen before. And it showed a wonderful but also fragile planet – a planet that we need to take care of.

The German astronaut Alexander Gerst echo es this sentiment with his video message from space on 19 December 2018. He asks his poten tial grandchild for forgiveness: ‘At this moment it does not really look like we, my generation, are leaving you the planet in its best condition.’ Hu manity is in the process of tipping the climate, clearing forests, polluting oceans and using up limited resources far too quickly. Earth is a ‘fra gile spaceship’ and he hopes that ‘we will get our act together’. This video was shared thousands of times. But does it have any consequences? When the Club of Rome published its Limits to Growth Report in 1972, the central committee of the World Council of Churches were so sho cked that they called for prayer. We have known since then that the ecological system does not sustain our way of living and consuming. Subduing the world is no longer the issue, but rather to preserve it. At the 1983 General Assembly of the Coun cil of World Churches, it became clear: justice, peace and integrity of creation are closely connec ted. The German churches demanded a council of peace in view of the nuclear threat. The South Afri can churches declared that the peace issue should not be used to circumvent the issue of justice. Finally, the churches in the Paci fi c stated: ’There is a connection. Nuclear weapons tests in our region are destroying the basis of our existence.’ And all of this is not merely an ethical challenge for the Council of World Churches. It is more of the church’s issue being the church, of its credibility in its pronouncement that it will devote itself to these topics. If the church does not defend the integrity of creation, it repudiates the creator of whom it speaks in the proclamation.

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